5 hits and 5 misses on the campaign trail, Sep. 24-28

Here are the highlights from an eclectic campaign week. Add it all up and it looks like another strong week for the Obama campaign – but not without some encouraging developments for the Republican ticket.

Hits:

1. Benghazi opens another front for GOP. The Obama administration has flailed on the issue of the deadly Libya consular attack that claimed the life of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. They have been slow to recognize that the attack was distinct from the protesting street mobs, and Republicans, desperate to seize on anything that could look like a big mistake by the administration, are claiming a conspiracy and a coverup. It’s also a chance for the Republican Party to deflect attention to Romney’s clumsiness and relative inexperience in foreign policy. Advantage: Romney.

2. Tough talk on Iran, at the right time. The Romney campaign desperately needs more appeal to Jewish voters. That’s why Sheldon Adelson is pouring money into ads targeting them. In that vein, the Romney camp would just love to paint President Obama as soft on Israeli security. With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a personal friend of Mitt Romney’s, this would seem to be a promising avenue of attack. But Obama just won’t give that scenario any oxygen. His speech Tuesday to the UN General Assembly, warning Iran that their time to comply with international demands “is not unlimited,” and “a nuclear Iran is not a challenge that can be contained,” cut off the argument at the knees and earned praise at Netanyahu’s own General Assembly speech two days later. Advantage: Obama.

3. Soros kicks in. With Republicans raising far more dollars through Super PAC donations than Democrats, the Obama campaign had to be psyched this week when the New York Times disclosed that George Soros had given $1.5 million to Dem PACs, including $1 million to Priorities USA Action, the leading Obama reelection Super PAC. He’s given a total of $4.3 million to Democratic groups this cycle. But Republicans still lead the PAC money race by a healthy margin, and lightning rod Soros’ entrance into the fray is already being used as a fund-raising tool by the GOP. Advantage: Still Romney.

4. Pennsylvania vote law eased. In a last-gasp effort to get a court to allow its implementation, Pennsylvania eased a key provision of its Voter ID law. Prospective voters will now have to give only their name, date of birth, Social Security number and address – not two documents showing where they live. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court had ordered a lower court to invalidate the law unless the state could prove that there would be no disenfranchisement of voters. The court is expected to decide whether or not to block the law altogether by next Tuesday. Advantage: Voters.

5. The economy shows signs of strength. …The housing market continues to recover, and this time it’s the most affordable houses that are ticking up in value. The July home-price numbers, released Tuesday, show all 20 cities surveyed showing price increases, indicating that we’ve seen the worst – finally – of the housing malaise. Also, stock prices continue to hover at levels close to five-year highs. Yes, unemployment remains high, but companies have money to invest and the outlook is better than it’s been for awhile. Advantage: Obama.

Misses:

1. …but the deficit looms. Sunday’s close of the fiscal year will bring new focus on the intractable budget deficit, projected to top $1 trillion for the fourth straight year. It’s a talking point for the GOP and they are wasting no time lining up to criticize President Obama for breaking his promise to cut the deficit in half. While he uses a tortuous technical argument to make the case that he has done so, the takeaway from the magical $1 trillion number is unmistakable. “Of all the broken promises from President Obama, this is probably the worst one,” GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said Tuesday. Yes, the Bush tax cuts and spending on Iraq and Afghanistan wars have a lot more to do with the deficit than Obama’s stimulus. But the fact remains that this is a tried and true talking point for the Republicans. Advantage: Romney.

2. The ache just won’t go away: Todd Akin stays in the race, and the pain continues. Just how tone-deaf is he? He volunteered the opinion Tuesday that when his Missouri opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, ran against Sen Jim Talent in 2006 she was “very much more sort of ladylike” than she is today – a fact that he attributes to her being “threatened” this time around. Then, proving that political ethics (oxymoron alert) are invariably situational, the National Republican Senatorial Committee gave in and endorsed Akin Thursday. Tantalized by the fact Akin continues to be competitive, the organization, headed by Texas Sen. John Cornyn, issued a statement that “we hope Todd Akin wins in November.” Cornyn later said that didn’t mean the organization would give Akin any money. But Republicans were clearly seen as backtracking on what started out as a matter of principle. Reince Priebus said emphatically just a month ago that the Republican Party would not support Akin. Now, he says the party “absolutely” supports him. Advantage: Obama.

3 For GOP, the Ryan Medicare nightmare. Paul Ryan was a calculated risk for Mitt Romney. Now, the calculations are coming in, and they may be the campaign’s death knell. Look at these results from the Quinnipiac/New York Times swing-states poll released Wednesday: The GOP is getting crushed on the issue of Medicare. By margins of 55-40 in Florida and 55-39 in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, voters believe Obama would do the better job for Medicare recipients. Those numbers are up dramatically since the selection of Ryan as Romney’s running mate. Voters are ignoring the nuance and the spin and going to the heart of the Ryan budget proposal, and they don’t like what they’re hearing. Advantage: Obama.

4. We have met the enemy, and he is us. After raising the specter of vote fraud as a rationale for Voter ID laws and aggressive examination of voter rolls in urban areas across the country particularly in swing states, the Republican Party has finally found the biggest confirmed case of voter fraud in this election cycle. It involves irregularities in six Florida counties, to wit, dead people being registered to vote in a coordinated effort run by a political consultant. The only catch is that the dead were being registered as Republicans by a GOP-hired consultant, Strategic Allied Consulting of Tempe, Ariz. Advantage: Obama.

5.Don’t count on that big refund. After widespread criticism that the Romney plan to cut taxes and the deficit simultaneously was unrealistic and lacking specifics, the challenger’s campaign perceived an opening to lure independent voters who are exceedingly worried about the deficit. Emphasizing his resolve to cut the deficit, Romney Wednesday took the opportunity to warn voters – still without benefit of specifics – that they shouldn’t expect “a huge cut in taxes because I’m also going to lower deductions and exemptions.” The retreat on taxes took on surreal semantics when he explained, “What we’re proposing is a tax reform, not a tax cut.” So if taxes aren’t going down, in what direction can we expect them to go? Advantage: Obama.